Long was the conversation of the brothers after their children had left them to themselves.  Together they wandered over the scenes of childhood, recalling its minutest, and, what would be to strangers, uninteresting scenes, George Armstrong listening, with a sad pleasure, to the details of his parents’ lives after his own escape from the Asylum, and, also, to changes in the family of his brother since their death; while James Armstrong as eagerly drank in the particulars of his brother George’s adventures.  But little respecting the latter need be added, after what has been disclosed.

We already know, that George Armstrong married, in one of the Western States, and commenced the life of a pioneer, and that, in a night attack, his cabin had been burned, his wife killed, and his son carried away by the savages.  It would seem that the effect of these misfortunes was again to disturb his reason, and that, urged by a passion for revenge, he had made himself terrible, under the name of Onontio (given by the natives, with what meaning is unknown,) among the Western Indians.  But, after a time, the feeling passed away, and he became, somehow, a subject of religious impressions, which assumed the shape of a daily expectation of the Coming of Christ, joined with a firm belief in the doctrine of predestination.  In this frame of mind, influenced by a feeling like the instinct, perhaps, of the bird which returns from the southern clime, whither the cold of winter has driven it, to seek again the tree where hung the parental nest, George Armstrong came back to the place of his birth.  He was supposed to be dead, and, even without any such prepossession, no one would have recognized him; for, the long beard he had suffered to grow, and the sorrow and hardship he had undergone, gave him an appearance of much more advanced age than his elder brother, and effectually disguised him.  Why, instead of taking possession of the cabin, on Salmon Island, and secluding himself from society, he did not make himself known to his brother and demand his inheritance, always puzzled the gossips of Hillsdale, and yet, it appears to us, susceptible of explanation.

When he came from the West, he felt, at first, as if the ties which had united him to the world, were broken, never to be renewed.  What he most prized and loved he had lost.  He was an exception to other men.  He had been isolated by destiny, whose iron finger pointed to solitude, and solitude he chose as most congenial to his bruised spirit.  But, besides, an idea had mastered him, in whose presence the vanities and indulgences of the world and all worldly considerations, shrunk into insignificance.  Of what consequence were wealth and distinction to one who looked momently for the introduction of a state of things, when they would be of less importance than the baubles of a child?  The gay world might laugh and jest in its delusion, but it was for him to watch and pray.  Some feeling of resentment, too, towards